GUEST: This is a painting that my grandfather purchased. It was passed down to my father and then it's been passed down to me. I know that Percy Gray is a Californian watercolorist. I know he painted in the '20s and '30s.
APPRAISER: It's signed right here and dated 1930.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Do you think your grandfather purchased it around 1930?
GUEST: I think so.
APPRAISER: Do you know where he purchased it?
GUEST: Well, there's a sticker on the back that says “Gump's, San Francisco." So I'm assuming, uh, that's...
APPRAISER: That is a likely source, because Gray did sell his work through Gump's.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Percy Gray, whose official name is Henry Percy Gray, was born in 1869 in San Francisco. His father had immigrated from England. But what's interesting was that there were about 12 family members that were artists. He had a childhood illness, and at that time, his brother gave him some art supplies. And that was when he discovered that he had a real talent for art and wanted to pursue it.
GUEST: Mm-hmm-- oh!
APPRAISER: He s, went to art school in San Francisco, but then, by 1895, he was working for a newspaper in New York. But he continued to study in the evenings with William Merritt Chase, who was a premier teacher of American artists. But in 1906, he was sent back out to San Francisco to cover the earthquake.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: And at that point, he decided to stay in his hometown. At one point, he developed an allergy to oil paint.
GUEST: Oh!
APPRAISER: And that was when he changed to using watercolor, for which he is well-known.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: When he used watercolor, one thing he did was apply the color quite densely so you don't automatically have that initial reaction that it's a watercolor. He really is one of the most successful and well-known landscape artists in California. And your picture shows some of the trademark subject matter that he revisits over and over again.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: The lupine and the eucalyptus trees. He also tended to use a kind of muted palette with mainly greens, browns, and grays. In his early work, he was influenced by Impressionism, but when he got into his mature phase, he was really more influenced by the Barbizon School and Tonalism...
GUEST: Oh, yes.
APPRAISER: ...which are very muted palettes. (chuckling): He actually was also very conservative, and he h, he was one of the founders of something called Society for Sanity in Art. And they were opposed to everything that wasn't conventional, traditional, so they opposed abstraction, Surrealism, and Cubism. But he really is a wonderful artist, and I think if this were offered in a retail gallery, the asking price might be around $65,000.
GUEST: Oh! Gosh! That's interesting to know. (laughs)
APPRAISER: It's never been on the market except for the initial purchase.
GUEST: No.
APPRAISER: It's in the original frame. It has a, a lot of things going for it.
